NOMAD 67

The Art of Individuality

I grew up in the 70s. While my friends were listening to tales of topographic oceans and songs about giant hogweeds, I kept a near-secret store of vinyl gems. Many had holes in the covers because they were "cut-outs" (records that had sold so poorly that there were suplus copies which were imported from the USA just to get rid). At least The Velvet Underground were accepted but there was little respect for The Stooges or MC5. I bought the first Stooges album in a special mail order offer for £1 including an Atlantic sampler worth 99p. Well, punk came and went and I heard some great music but nothing ever quite surpassed early Stooges.

You get the idea, I'm talking about the greatest album and greatest band I've ever heard. My adolescence is just a dull ache in the past. But still I can't help yearning to once again experience that rush of blood of that The Stooges gave me. There have been moments that have recreated that sheer gut-wrenching joy in music since - gigs with Nirvana or Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine spring to mind.

That's history isn't it, but it gives you a context to judge what I am about to say. Imagine that I get to hear a band that actually play simple, loud songs with driving riffs and it all reproduces the same feelings as I felt when I was 14 - a teenager who found music as an escape from the constrained world he was trapped in. Imagine a young three piece band that just blow away the cobwebs that have built up in my head.

The songs are so simple lyrically. Better Off starts the album based mainly around the words:

I'm better off alone
I'm better off at home

Do you understand the power that a band can wring from those words? If you do then read the entire lyrics for the second track French Coffee:

Did you find your French Coffee?
Would you mind if I have some?
We do love your French Coffee
But we haven't got none
Yeah


That's it, just add the explosives. This isn't James Blunt seeing a girl on the Tube, saying I have a plan and then forgetting about the plan (lyrical master that he is). let's skip to the track The Art Of Individuality and what we get is TV Eye with Ron Ashton guitar solo. It just keeps on coming: track after track of noise and energy. There's plenty of moments where there's added melodic guitar a la Nirvana to let your ears rest a bit before you are pummelled into submission again. Smudge is teenage angst that just screams Moshpit - St. Johns Ambulance should sponsor Nomad 67 when they pulverise a chorus.

This is possibly the most exciting album I've heard for a decade. It's like falling in love for the first time. It's just not fair that all those bands from Canada and the US have failed to take up Nirvana's challenge and a band from rural Worcestershire have understood what great music is all about. Not fair for the American continent perhaps, but it all makes sense to me.

I have this funny feeling that my friends are about to apply for me to be incarcerated in a Mental Institution on the strength of this review...

- Cool Noise.co.uk

Kurt Cobain: genius, innovator, misery guts. He’s also cited by Nomad67 as one of their main influences. But while Kurt spent so much time feeling down on life, the Worcestershire trio use their spiky riffs, staccato lyrics and feedback fetishism to build songs bursting with energy, vitality and brain-invading pop hooks. Of course, Nirvana aren’t the only band on Nomad67’s radar over the course of their ‘Art Of Individuality’ lp. There are plenty of punk wild cards in the mix, plus some chomping ‘60s grooves and even the odd touch of Dave Grohl’s other outfit. The results are sometimes dark, sometimes demented, but they all power into your consciousness like an over-friendly Doberman with an English degree.

Opening salvos, “Better Off” and “French Coffee” are masterclasses in sleek, infectious alt rock, and Jay Lawson offers an impressively lean and mean Foos-style vocal. Likewise, “Give Me” is a dynamic and glossy slice of Buzzcocks dirty pop, while “Rabid” hints at the heavily-drilled punk precision of The Ramones. Things aren’t always so neat and tidy, however. “Woody” goes into some seriously off-kilter quiet bit/loud bit action. Following that, “Albino Jim” and the album’s title track bring the noise with walls of feedback and spine-contorting blues riffs to sound like a Frankenstein Hendrix on electrodes.

The tone shifts occasionally with the dead-eyed atmospherics of “Bleach”, “In The Closet” and “Eulogy”. The most lo-fi effort here, “Cut Me Up” spits venom into a hail of feedback. But even these tunes can’t stay sat down for long as the harmonies come in over waves of piercing metal mayhem. But it’s in the realm of the high energy/high angst pop song that Nomad67 really make a mean kebab. “Track 3” updates a gnat’s tight ‘60s groove to come on like Jefferson Airplane meets Franz Ferdinand, while “Smudge” and “Chained” scream their way into three-minute paradise. “Roadkill”, though, is the one tune that could get the housewives singing along in Asda. It’s got lots “whoa-oh” harmonies and you can dance to it. And somewhere in amongst all its fuzzed-up New Wave mentalism, there’s a hit single just dying to get out. - Overplay.com